xbox one Microsoft to release Kinect-less Xbox One

[Soundwave]

 

Microsoft is to release a Kinect-less Xbox One SKU on June 9, the platform holder has confirmed.

 

 

The SKU will cost $399 in North America and is expected to retail for £349 in the UK.

 

"Since the beginning, we have focused on delivering great games and entertainment experiences for you," said Xbox chief Phil Spencer. "Your feedback matters to us and it shapes the products and services we build. Your feedback showed up in the Xbox One console we launched back in November and in the monthly updates we've delivered since."

 

"We've heard that you want more choices from Xbox One," he continued. "You want a wide variety of options in your games and entertainment experiences and you also want options in your hardware selection." Despite dropping Kinect from the box, Spencer claims that the peripheral will continue to be an "an important part of our vision".

 

"Many of you are using Kinect for Xbox One every day," he says. "In fact, more than 80 percent of you are actively using Kinect, with an average of 120 voice commands per month on each console. Some of the most popular voice commands include 'Xbox On,' 'Xbox Broadcast' and 'Xbox Record That.' We will continue to offer a premium Xbox One with Kinect bundle to deliver voice and gesture controls, biometric sign-in, instant personalization, instant scanning of QR codes, and enhanced features only available with Kinect in games such as 'Kinect Sports Rivals,' 'Just Dance 2014,' 'Project Spark' and more."

 

For those who wish to purchase Kinect at a later date, a standalone Kinect sensor will be available to purchase from autumn.

 

 

Thanks - Microsoft to release Kinect-less Xbox One - VideoGamer.com

[Paladin Skylark]

Sony's pulling away in terms of sales, I assume this is their effort to try and make a comeback

[hassan1995]

I reckon it's a little too late, maybe there will be a slight increase in sales but I doubt they'll catch sony.

[superhyper]

They lost the game all the way back in last years E3 with all the trash talk going on in the internet and so on...

 

This is good news for me as I'm still planning on getting an Xbone and I don't necessarily need the Kinect :nods:

[Ryzza5]

How could they possibly know which voice commands were the most popular if they weren't listening in? :fp:

(I do actually know the answer to that)

 

It seems apparent that (as a lot of us predicted) the Kinect is no more integral to playing games on the Xbone than it is on the Xbox 360. Not every game will benefit from it and so developers won't use it for no ROI, especially when also making the same game for PS4. Gamers for the most part will be happy sticking to classic controller games that don't use Kinect as well. That's not even thinking about the paranoid out there that assume MS and NSA are spying on them.

[Ryzza5]

A eulogy for Kinect: Why Xbox pulled the plug - The Globe and Mail

[mau92]

I guess that first Xbox One customers might be angry... They payed for the, now unnecessary, kinect...

[Ryzza5]

The price was always/eventually going to go down. They paid for the privilege of being an early-adopter imo.